What do you mean I've had this blog for three years? I feel old now.
As of Aug. 1st, this blog was a full three years old. Meaning that it's been three full years since I went to college, two full years since I've had mono (the first time, anyway), and a year since my senior seminar.
...woah...
As a student who failed to read newspapers throughout college and a writer who blatantly avoided book reviews for fear of their impact on my own writing far-off in the still non-existent future, I have a lot of catching up to do. I’d missed the demise of the book review—though I’d earnestly saved quite a few old sections of the Miami Herald to read “when I had time” back in high school—and now I’m intrigued enough by the Columbia Journalism Review’s conference in New York and in-class references to the San Francisco Chronicle’s recent article on reviewing that I’ve decided to investigate. A post from Critical Mass: the blog of the national book critics circle board of directors helped set the stage: “Over the past few months, the erosion of space for book reviews directed at general readers has reached critical proportions. The tipping point was the departure of Teresa Weaver as book review editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, not to be replaced,” wrote guest blogger Morris Dickstein. The Associated Press followed, closing it’s book review desk, then the Raleigh News-Observer, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times all fell prey to cutbacks to or complete obliteration of independent book reviewing and review sections. His quote from Adam Shatz, literary editor at The Nation, helped me put the issue into further perspective: I might not have been a life-long reader of reviews, but it does reveal that “‘the pleasure [of reading] is had at the expense of analysis and criticism, as if the latter somehow robbed us of the fun instead of adding to it’” (qtd. in Dickstein). Dickstein’s belief that “the Internet is seen as the enemy of literature” made me cringe, though. I found that I agreed more with the stance that Adam Kirsch took in his New York Sun article “The Scorn of the Literary Blog.” He argues that “bloggers…tend to consider themselves disenfranchised” and thus tend to leap wildly at established authors, publishers, and literary journalists, making their reviews a risky choice for the future of criticism. Even if the minority of truly literary blogs were given an open field with no illogical, passionate competitors as distracters, “the blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature” (Kirsch). Most importantly, Kirsch argues that “literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a scope, complexity and authority that no blogger I know even wants to achieve.” He’s right, too. Truly lofty, scholarly blogs get small readership in most cases, unless they are tied to a larger, reputable news service. At that point, the “blogs” become a cross between the traditional print opinion column and the emergency-valve of Blogger: the writing is scholarly and regular, the references are linked in, and comments can be made. Even while this hope is nigh, literary scholarship is threatened by the likes of Pierre Bayard, author of How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read, a book reviewed in July by the Times Literary Supplement in London. Even the literary journalism community thinks one of the most prolific reviewers, James Wood, may be detrimental thanks to his possible misunderstanding of American culture (a theory Wood strongly debates), according to an article from the Boston Globe. The best source, however, was from the Columbia Journalism Review itself—an article I happened upon last, of course. In “Goodbye to All That,” Steve Wasserman confronts the demons of his experience as the literary editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review from 1996-2005—what he calls “a front-row seat at the increasingly congested intersection of culture and commerce.” From everything I can gather, the book review—along with the codex—cannot wait for the gravitational pull of technology to wrestle it into submission; without a driving force behind the change, technology’s centrifugal forces might not leave scholarship recognizably intact. Dare we be the dinosaurs who refused to evolve and the few ancient alligators among us the last, deadly reminder of a bygone age? Or will we stop despairing about change and progress and get on with preserving what we love?
This is the first post of a weekly series devoted to investigating current events in the publishing world. I tend to look at most issues from a writer's perspective because I am a writer; now I'm trying to look at the world from the eyes of a publisher interested in the future of the business because I am a publisher interested in the future of the business.I have a small confession: when I opened The Evolution of the Book, I did not expect to find myself entertained and impressed. Kilgour’s decision to include highly specific information about each book form—from Cicero’s letter to Atticus to 19th commentary on printing presses to the exact means by which Xeroxes work—kept me from feeling like I was in the middle of a dry history book. His inclusion of facts from every discipline—medicine, science, anthropology, technology—surprised me greatly. Most impressive, however, was his treatment of the electronic book as the “sixth punctuation.” Kilgour remained optimistic about the effects of developing technology, mainly because he seems to focus on the history of the book as a whole as a progression; he sees no reason why another development wouldn’t continue carrying the industry forward. Albert Greco's The Book Publishing Industry, on the other hand, always refers to electronic publishing in the most negative sense possible, blaming it for “cutting inroads” into publishers profits and ignoring that publishers have been utilizing those very technologies to supplement and develop those profits as they can. Even an article from the New York Times--“Are Books Passé?”--made waves supporting the rise of the e-book reader, two of which will be debuting this fall. I can’t imagine holding back progress just because the book in codex form is a security blanket to readers across the globe. I, too, love a good book. I feel like a signed first-edition is utterly precious and absolutely delicious to read, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t read in any other format and enjoy the same words. The same sorts of arguments must have been present leading up to the five previous “punctuations” in the life of the book (Mark Twain’s exasperation with the typewriter come to mind). I’d prefer to be ahead of the game than behind it; better to be the first artist on CD than the last artist on the 8-Track.
It's funny how bad news travels sometimes. I never expected to see an obituary in Publisher's Weekly's Daily Newsletter, and if you'd asked me who a PW Daily obituary would be about, I'd never have guessed the beloved Madeline L'Engle.
I was very young--probably too young--when A Wrinkle in Time first showed up on my bookshelf. It took me years to pick it up, but when I did...I don't think any amount of cliches will fill that blank, truthfully. I felt the same way some people have felt about Ender's Game, Pride and Prejudice, The Lord of the Rings and/or The Hobbit, and countless other great works: it changed me. Not just my life. Me. I may have dreamed of Tesseracts and mitocondritis and seraphim and mediums (admittedly, I remember searching my mind for the right definition when the medium was introduced, and not finding it in "stuff you make art with" and "a size," I decided that it would be better to read on than waste time with a dictionary); I may have imagined myself as Meg a thousand more times than I actually remember. But what really matters, all these years afterwards, is that it was the first book I remember with great passion still burning from the first time I picked it up.
I remember the feel of the storm in the book, the intensity of Meg's leadership and maternal instinct and love for Calvin, the joy of new creatures and success, and the worry about an darkness spreading through the universe. I vowed that I would be one of the journeyers who set out to save existence. And I had that book in my hand when I realized that I, too, wanted to write. And not write just anything, either. I craved more fantasy of my own making. And of L'Engle's as well. So I finished the Time Quintet and picked up the books she wrote about Victoria Austin (whose nickname I disliked, but who I adored, none the less). Through her work, I realized the possibilities of writing interconnected series, of searching for deep and timeless meaning in life and using it to inspire youth...youth like me.
A Wrinkle in Time had done for me what The Hobbit had done for my mom and her generation of YA readers. And it earned some of the highest honors in the history of adolescent literature. I even used it as a source in my honors thesis. To have met her, to have been honored with the chance to tell her that yet one more child's direction in life was given momentum and motivation through her work would have been an opportunity of a lifetime...
I am blessed to have people in my life who knew her work well enough to give it to me. One day, I'll give it to my sister, my children, my nieces and nephews, anyone impressionable child I can find. =)
At eighty-nine years old, she'd lived a very long and (from what I can gather) fulfilling life. I hope she knew the effect her work had on the world, on the genre of literature she chose to write. If she did, maybe she found comfort in the knowledge that her books outlast the days she saw in person.
...But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.-- Sonnet 18, W. Shakespeare
I'm finally tossing the pseudonym in favor of my actual nickname. Yes world, I've finally identified myself!
Oh, and I have a puppy named pepper. You can see her photo/video blog at dog.blue-stockings.com.
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